Streaming Services Took In Lots of Funding in 2012

If venture funding is a measure of the success of online music then things are going well, according to a recent article which claims that music industry ventures raised $621 million in 2012. The article also points out that funding to music ventures is up 34% while funding across all sectors has dropped 10%. You may want to take some of this with a grain of salt however, an article in Billboard a few weeks ago points out that some of the companies counted in that big number are actually not music services at all.

Nonetheless, there were a number of services that got big dollars last year, including Spotify, Deezer, TuneIn, SoundCloud, Senzari, Soundrop, exfm, Songza, Jelli and The EchoNest, all services that are directly related to the streaming marketplace. According to my tally, streaming related services took $328 million in funding last year, with Deezer and Spotify leading the charge.